“Now and forever, the school in Catalan”
Thousands of people demonstrated for the continuity of the school in Catalan. The struggle for self-determination and what policy to follow are in the background. We socialist revolutionaries must come together and postulate an alternative on the left.
A huge popular demonstration won the street again in defense of the Catalan language. The conflict resurfaced from a opinion of the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) that forces a 25% of the classes in Spanish, from an application at the school Dragon Hill, located in Canet de Mar. It is a new direct attack on the linguistic immersion model that establishes the Catalan language as the only teaching language.
They are the majority parties
El PP, Ciudadanos and Vox carry out systematic political campaigns against Catalan culture, expressing the most rancid of the right and the Spanish extreme right. The government of "Progressive coalition" PSOE-Unidas Podemos does its thing. It was made clear with the initial treatment of the audiovisual media law, in which no reference was made to the co-official languages of the State outside of Spanish. Something that was later nuanced from the agreement with ERC, that tries to sow calm on a very sensitive subject.
It is the regime of ‘ 78
It is not "only" about the attacks of this or that government or political party. It is the systematic action of the institutionality of the '78 regime against the democratic right of the Catalan people to express themselves in their language, defend their culture and self-determination. It is impossible to dissociate the ignorance of the 1-O Referendum, the application of 155, the repression, trials and imprisonments; of the attempt to crush the Catalan language and culture.
More autonomy cut off than Republic
The Catalan bourgeois government society, formed by ERC and JxCat maintains a speech in defense of Catalan, but in fact, obeys the central government of Pedro Sánchez. President Pere Aragonés and ERC deputies support the Spanish government to safeguard business deals from European funds, feed relaxation and tricky Dialogue Table.
JxCat requests that the Minister of Education Josep González-Cambray not apply the ruling of the TSJC and that he assume the direction of the Canet school. But it does so from the respect for the institutional framework that it shares with its partner in government., with which it works to recover a limited autonomy more than for the Catalan Republic. It is something that is expressed in all fields and explains the limited response to the attack on the Catalan language.
Defending the Catalan language is a democratic task for everyone
Defend the right of a people to express themselves in their language, It shouldn't be a Catalan-only task. It would have to involve all the people who claim simply to be democratic. Much more while a monarchical-parliamentary regime molded by a dictatorship is in force, that is able to contain the Gag Law, the existence of political prisoners and the repression of workers' demands, as it happens in Cádiz, where they persecute and imprison to participants of the metal strike.
Strong fighting measures are needed
The regime designed by the Franco regime will not stop its aggressions easily. It has been trying for decades to crush the claims of oppressed nationalities. Because, not enough with partial answers. It is necessary to resume the massive mobilizations, with educational unions, even more, those with pro-independence representation, calling for actions in the perspective of a general strike.
mass mobilization, independent political organization
To succeed, it is essential that the Catalan people take charge of their own destiny, democratically organized by self-determination. At the by, it is necessary to build a strong left-wing political alternative, anticapitalist, consistent in the fight for democratic and social rights. The CUP could play a leading role if it broke the agreements with ERC that support the Govern, and exceeding the warnings, will pass to the opposition, calling for mobilization and organization based on class independence.
The left confluence that is needed
There are several consequent left organizations acting separately, without any connection. Faced with the Podemos debacle and the disappointment caused by the reformists, a great opportunity was opened. The confluence of the socialists, revolutionaries and internationalists is a great challenge ahead of us. There is nothing to stop you from going down this road, since we have more programmatic agreements than differences. There is always time to patiently discuss nuances, while sharing a common course. Achieving it would be a step forward to present an alternative in the struggles and for the crisis to be paid for by the capitalists. To lay the foundations of a strong socialist project in the Spanish State. And so that just democratic demands are not separated from the indispensable social demands, on the path of a socialist society.
